Sac City Unified and Waivers from NCLB

The Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education has an informative post on the current status of so called CORE Waivers in Sac City Unified Schools.

http://savesacramentopublicschools.org/blogs/community-forum-core-waivers-urges-public-action

All Schools Need Assistance - Viewpoint

Every Sacramento school should be a ‘priority’ school

Special to The Bee   PUBLISHED THURSDAY, SEP. 12, 2013

As a teacher in Sacramento City Schools for the past 18 years and a parent of two children in the district, I join Marcus Breton in celebrating Father Keith B. Kenny’s rise in test scores (“A school that cares triumphs,” Sept. 4). The teachers and students worked very hard and deserve to be lauded for their efforts. However, in trying to establish a cause for the rise in scores, Breton left out many important details and did not paint a complete picture.

To assert that the gains were made because of “a break in teacher seniority” as he states in his column, is an oversimplification at best and is not supported by the facts. The school that made the biggest API gains in the district was not, in fact, one of Superintendent Jonathan Raymond’s “priority” schools. It was Maple Elementary, whose students were also all eligible for free and reduced lunch. Maple was one of the seven non-priority schools closed by the district last June.

Closing Schools, Faulting Teachers in Sacramento

July 25, 2013

By Seth Sandronsky
and Duane Campbell

Seth Sandronsky's ZSpace Page

Officially, a budget shortfall for the Sacramento City Unified School District caused closure of seven elementary schools. Marcos Bretón, a columnist for The Sacramento Bee, weighed in with this: “I honestly don't believe that the district was driven by racial bias in closing schools months ago” http://www.sacbee.com/2013/07/14/5565087/marcos-breton-poor-sacramento.html

Excellent in the column is recognition that the SCUSD schools in low-income neighborhoods are disastrously underfunded. Further, as Bretón notes, in low-income neighborhoods the police system does not work, the health system does not work, the garbage goes unpicked up, and water and sewage are problems, along with gangs. Why then, do we expect underfunded schools to work in such neighborhoods?

When it comes to education policy and race, Bretón finds fault in the plaintiffs’ bid to establish legal proof of racial bias in school closures. A federal district judge, Kimberly J. Mueller, agreed on July 22 that the case of the plaintiffs lacked merit.

When it comes to money and policy to close schools and save the district $1 million, we should put this amount in a broader context that Bretón does not. For instance, there is recent and relevant Sacramento history.

Between January 19, 2012, and June 5, 2012, the Walton Family Foundation, the philanthropic arm of retail giant Wal-Mart, donated a total of $500,000 to Stand Sacramento for Sacramento Schools, the 501(c) (3) nonprofit school reform group that Mayor Kevin Johnson founded in 2009 with $500,000 from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. In the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Mayor Kevin Johnson is the Second Vice-President and Education Reform Task Force Chair.

Contacted by one of us for comment, a spokesperson for his Stand Sacramento for Sacramento Schools declined to reply as to how the group is spending the $500,000. We know one thing. Walton Family Foundation money is not bridging a budget gap to keep the closed district schools open.

Private dollars flow. Public schools close. This trend speaks volumes about local public education now.

What was Kevin Johnson doing during the recent election ?

In this case the News and Review covers what the Sacramento Bee ignores.

Speaking of that whole Waiting for ‘Superman’ cult: What was Sacramento’s first couple doing this election season while hundreds of millions of dollars were on the line for Sacramento schools? Roving the country, trying to screw up other people’s school systems, of course.

Michelle Rhee, patron saint of the teacher-bashing movement, has been using her Sacramento-based StudentsFirst organization—a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization, of course—to funnel money into ballot measures in several states.

In Michigan, StudentsFirst funded anti-union groups trying to defeat a ballot measure that would put the right to organize unions for private and public employees into the state’s constitution. It’s a right that is recognized in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but apparently not one that Rhee thinks Michigan teachers (or any other workers) should have.

“I love teachers. Effective teachers,” she told members of the Michigan state Legislature while lobbying against the measure. By “effective” Rhee means teachers with high test scores: exactly the kind of evaluation system she instituted as chancellor of the Washington, D.C., schools before her boss, Mayor Adrian Fenty, was unelected and Rhee had to follow. The same kind of system that Raymond was warning about in his critique of Race to the Top.